This chapter traces the history of debate in the colonies during the mid eighteenth century and leading up to the First Continental Congress around the issue of rights. It demonstrates how a new ...
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This chapter traces the history of debate in the colonies during the mid eighteenth century and leading up to the First Continental Congress around the issue of rights. It demonstrates how a new concept, ‘rights of man’ came to have currency in the colonies at this time. This concept helped the colonists explain and understand how they could propose and eventuate a separation from the mother country.Less

“There Are, Thank God, Natural, Inherent and Inseparable Rights as Men …” : The Architecture of American Rights

Peter de Bolla

Published in print: 2013-12-01

This chapter traces the history of debate in the colonies during the mid eighteenth century and leading up to the First Continental Congress around the issue of rights. It demonstrates how a new concept, ‘rights of man’ came to have currency in the colonies at this time. This concept helped the colonists explain and understand how they could propose and eventuate a separation from the mother country.

The Architecture of Concepts proposes a radically new way of understanding the history of ideas. Taking as its example human rights, it develops a distinctive kind of conceptual analysis that enables ...
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The Architecture of Concepts proposes a radically new way of understanding the history of ideas. Taking as its example human rights, it develops a distinctive kind of conceptual analysis that enables us to see with precision how the concept of human rights was formed in the eighteenth century. The first chapter outlines an innovative account of concepts as cultural entities. The second develops an original methodology for recovering the historical formation of the concept of human rights based on data extracted from digital archives. This enables us to track the construction of conceptual architectures over time. Having established the architecture of the concept of human rights, the book then examines two key moments in its historical formation: the First Continental Congress in 1775 and the publication of Tom Paine’s Rights of Man in 1792. Arguing that we have yet to fully understand or appreciate the consequences of the eighteenth-century invention of the concept “rights of man,” the final chapter addresses our problematic contemporary attempts to leverage human rights as the most efficacious way of achieving universal equality.Less

The Architecture of Concepts : The Historical Formation of Human Rights

Peter de Bolla

Published in print: 2013-12-01

The Architecture of Concepts proposes a radically new way of understanding the history of ideas. Taking as its example human rights, it develops a distinctive kind of conceptual analysis that enables us to see with precision how the concept of human rights was formed in the eighteenth century. The first chapter outlines an innovative account of concepts as cultural entities. The second develops an original methodology for recovering the historical formation of the concept of human rights based on data extracted from digital archives. This enables us to track the construction of conceptual architectures over time. Having established the architecture of the concept of human rights, the book then examines two key moments in its historical formation: the First Continental Congress in 1775 and the publication of Tom Paine’s Rights of Man in 1792. Arguing that we have yet to fully understand or appreciate the consequences of the eighteenth-century invention of the concept “rights of man,” the final chapter addresses our problematic contemporary attempts to leverage human rights as the most efficacious way of achieving universal equality.

The American Revolution may be considered a kind of trust fund, legacy, or gift. It has never ended, as the methods that were first used to challenge British authority in America continue to be ...
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The American Revolution may be considered a kind of trust fund, legacy, or gift. It has never ended, as the methods that were first used to challenge British authority in America continue to be redeployed intermittently. Moreover, the political agency of the standing committees of correspondence and the genre of the popular declaration persist. In the years following the American Revolution, these methods have functioned as a political tool for challenging instituted authority. In examining the Whigs' use of new forms of communication to challenge Britain's sovereignty, this book contributes to an account of nation building. It has traced the evolution from the Whig network of committees to the gathering of the First Continental Congress culminating in the framing of the constitutional system in 1787. It has also discussed how The Votes and Proceedings of the Town of Boston, a pamphlet authored by the Boston Committee of Correspondence, became a precursor of the Declaration of Independence.Less

The American Revolution as a Gift

William B. Warner

Published in print: 2013-09-05

The American Revolution may be considered a kind of trust fund, legacy, or gift. It has never ended, as the methods that were first used to challenge British authority in America continue to be redeployed intermittently. Moreover, the political agency of the standing committees of correspondence and the genre of the popular declaration persist. In the years following the American Revolution, these methods have functioned as a political tool for challenging instituted authority. In examining the Whigs' use of new forms of communication to challenge Britain's sovereignty, this book contributes to an account of nation building. It has traced the evolution from the Whig network of committees to the gathering of the First Continental Congress culminating in the framing of the constitutional system in 1787. It has also discussed how The Votes and Proceedings of the Town of Boston, a pamphlet authored by the Boston Committee of Correspondence, became a precursor of the Declaration of Independence.